Chapter 2
Previous Chapter The sweet smell of a morning after a night of torrential downpour. Had it not been for that scent drifting in through an open bedroom window, Kaz might have been able to sleep another four hours. Maybe even five. He slowly opened his eyes, breathed in the sweet aroma, and groggily checked his phone beside him. “The alarm didn’t go off, I’ve still got time,” Kaz thought sleepily to himself. The thunderstorm last night, combined with the heat of the season, kept him from being able to fall asleep for hours. He even kept his window open due to how hot it was. Strangely, the pouring rain somehow never made it through that wide opening into the room. It was another half an hour of half-awake snoozing before it registered in his mind that he was a whole hour late for work. Kaz swore as he jumped out of bed and dashed to the bathroom to freshen up. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror. Dyed, medium length blonde hair with streaks of brown atop of a face with pale complexion. Brown eyes that he sometimes hid behind colored contact lenses. He did his best to comb his messy, unruly hair. “Of course I would forget to do laundry again,” he groaned, making his way to the front door. He knew no one would pay much attention, but it made him uncomfortable nonetheless knowing that others might realize that he wore the same shirt for three days straight. Kaz hopped on his bike and pedaled furiously. A backdraft of wind blew in the direction he was biking. While weaving through a wooded trail shortcut through the neighborhoods along the way, he ran through excuses in his head on why he was late, but was unable to think one that wasn’t similar to one he had already used. “Wow. I might have actually used up every possible excuse,” Kaz groaned. As he approached a steep hill, he glanced around himself. While all of his actions that morning had been rushed, he exercised precision, care, and concentration in checking his surroundings. It would be very troublesome indeed if someone were watching. A lady was facing away from him, walking inside of her house. The windows in the houses along the street had no faces in them. No one else was around. Perfect opportunity. A huge gust of wind surged from behind Kaz. Tree branches that were previously vertical and upright bent almost horizontally under the strong current. He closed his eyes to focus the force of the gust. It was too broad at the moment, but by connecting himself with the howling air around him he was able to focus it down. It was like taking a large lump of dough and rolling it into a thin stick. Only when it came to manipulating the wind, the spin had to be near perfect and the sides of the force had to be straight with a consistent taper. By taking all of this windpower and making it, in Kaz’s own words, pointy at one end and nice and big at the other, he could focus it on a smaller area and get more power out of it. He had to get the swirl right, otherwise the gust would dissipate around him and become a broad gale again. The swirl allowed for the wind to be manipulated into narrower shapes, allowing for more power. Kaz began pedaling to gain his balance. From there, the wind did all the work. Kaz knew that he didn’t get the swirl perfect this time, but it would do. A blast of air behind him propelled him to the top of the steep hill at a ridiculous speed. From there, it was all downhill until he got to his workplace. Kaz only had to watch out for obstacles as he sped along at highway speed down the hill. While it would appear unnatural for someone to be speeding uphill, going down at such a speed wouldn’t attract as much attention. Unnatural. Attention. These words haunted him. As he cruised towards his workplace, Kaz tried to ignore the fact that he was about to see the world record for the most upside-down and angriest frown humanly possible on the face of his boss by drifting off into a daydream about a past conversation. ....... “Okay, so let me get this straight, it’s a sideways tornado?” the brown haired girl giggled, her hazel eyes twinkling. “Wha-?! No! How many times do I have to tell you it’s not a freakin’ tornado!” Kaz huffed. “Maybe this is why you can’t use the wind for your life!” “And what’s that supposed to mean? At least I can do more than just blow little puffs of air,” the girl retorted. The earth beneath them cracked slightly as she spoke. “Besides, that was supposed to sound cool. I was complimenting you!” “No you weren’t! Dammit Irene, you know how much I hate tornadoes!” Kaz heatedly responded. “Tornadoes have no focus, no purpose, and don’t do anything with all the power they have except mess up everything around them! And furthermore, they-” Irene rolled her eyes to cut him off. “Oh no, here comes one of your weird speeches on weird topics.” “Hey! I’m trying to inform and enlighten you here!” The two weren’t always like that. It wasn’t too long ago before that conversation that the girl joking with him had thought of him as trash. As a liability. And then she became one of the only friends he ever had in his entire life. Years had passed by since they had last seen each other. The last glimpse he saw was of her encasing herself in stone. A horrific sight that haunted his dreams. The last expression- -*CRASH!!*- Kaz was jolted out of his daydream by being suddenly thrown from his bike. By the time he had registered that he was airborne, he was already about to crash head first. Instead of landing on the hard concrete, he fell atop a strong, concentrated upward draft of wind that gently guided him to the ground. Getting up off the concrete, he looked around for the cause of the crash. And then he saw it. A small tree had fallen over in front of the route he usually took. From the looks of it, it had been hit by the thunderstorm last night. He looked at his bike. The front tire had popped from the impact. “Oh great, this is just what I need-” Kaz stopped mid-grumble. “Wait. This is just what I needed!” It was the perfect excuse. And his workplace was just a few more minutes down the street by foot anyways. Kaz wheeled his bike over to the restaurant where he worked. Maple Tea Cafe. It was a trendy, Asian cafe that was extremely popular among young adults in the area. Previously, it was called Nocturnes, named after a haunting Chinese pop song, and was supposed to be the nighttime hangout for college age students. Strangely, it was extremely popular during the day and had few customers at night, prompting a complete restaurant makeover. Kaz had decided to eat there one day after the style change. While he was eating, a server tripped next to him, sending the stack of plates she was carrying into the air. Kaz had managed to nimbly catch each plate, prompting the owner who saw his reflexes in action to immediately offer him a job there. Kaz locked his bike in the rack behind the restaurant and went through the backdoor. “Hahaha… Sorry I’m la-” -*WHACK*- Kaz suddenly found his eyes level with his groin. Something had smacked him hard from above. Wincing in pain, he looked up to see a stepladder. And on top of that stepladder- “Karina! Wai-” -*WHACK* *WHACK* *WHACK*- Kaz couldn’t even cry for mercy under the hail of blows from Karina on the stepladder. “You” *WHACK* “Are” *WHACK* “Late” *WHACK* “Ah” *WHACK* “Giahn” *WHACK* Kaz could not stop seeing stars. Today was the day he realized where the cartoons got their inspiration from. Karina stepped down. She was a young Chinese woman of average height, although to reach Kaz from that angle a stepladder was necessary. “What the hell did you hit me with?!” Kaz winced, rubbing the top of his sore head. Karina was holding a rolled up magazine, but the force behind each blow was too heavy to have been caused by merely paper. “Ground beef.” She unrolled the magazine to reveal a tube of slightly frozen meat. She turned her head towards the kitchen. “Okay, Cindy, the meat is ready!” A girl with dyed orange hair skipped out from the kitchen. She burst out into a big grin upon seeing Kaz. “Kaz! You’re late again! We worked soooo hard to cover for you, how could you do this to us?” Cindy pouted, her framed glasses bouncing on her cheeks as her lips purposely quivered up and down. “Surely there’ll be some compensation!” “Did I just hear compensation?” A teenage boy’s spiky haired head stuck out sideways from the kitchen door frame. “Oh hey Kaz! You’re late! Thanks for the wages by the way.” The boy winked, grinning ear to ear. “Aw man, I was only late by an hour! I’m getting my entire day’s pay cut?” Kaz moaned. “An HOUR?! Two at the very least, AND you were supposed to come in EARLY today REMEMBER?!” Karina huffed. “We’ve lost a lot of productivity because you weren’t here for most of the morning and all of us had to cover for you. Half of today’s pay will be their compensation.” “Yay! The meat is so tender!” Cindy examined the ground beef admiringly. “Wow Kaz, your thick skull makes for a great tenderizer!” “Wait, wait, if you guys are all here picking on me, then who’s manning the kitchen and the counter?” Kaz asked. He turned to the boy at the kitchen door. “Kyosuke, aren’t you supposed to be at the front?” “Oh no, Kuroi’s got this.” Kyosuke replied, twirling a few strands of loose hair back into spikes. “He tried to invent some new drink by adding all sorts of different energy mixes to it. After he tried some, the energy all rushed into his head and he activated his hyper mode final form. Now he’s manning almost everything. The rest of us barely even need to work at-” Kyosuke immediately cut himself off, grinning sheepishly. “Aha! So you guys weren’t overworked in my absence!” Kaz stated defiantly, crossing his arms over his chest. “That still doesn’t excuse you for being late for the… I don’t think there exists a number yet to count that high.” Karina growled. “What’s your excuse this time?” “Well, my bike blew a flat tire…” Kaz rubbed the back of his hair. Karina took a few steps outside to the bike rack and felt the bicycle. “Then why’s it here?” “Ah! I was gonna…” Kaz stammered, “I was gonna get it fixed after work!” “Why is the seat still warm from your lazy butt sitting on it?” “Uh, well, the flat tire happened along the way here…” “Then why is the front tire busted? Was this from a crash?” “Yeah! I crashed into a fallen tree…” “Then why don’t you have any injuries?” “Ah! Uh… I fell onto the grass-” “You don’t even have grass stains on you! And you’re wearing the same shirt for the third day in a row!” “Ah… I… Uh… I-” Karina wagged a finger at him. “You should go to law school so you can learn to be a better liar. How you are even still hired here is beyond me.” Karina was one of the most well-educated individuals Kaz had ever met. She was a child prodigy, and graduated with an MBA from Stanford University at the age of 22. Due to family issues, she lost financial support soon after. After paying off her enormous student loans, she no longer had the funds to found a successful tech startup like her university had urged her to, resulting in a feeling of disappointment for the first time in her life. After taking a look back at what she had lived for, she realized that she had never made a decision for herself, never made use of her talents outside of what her parents and teachers ordered her to, and never actually felt the comfort of true friendship. She spent her early twenties cold, closed off, emotionally damaged, and filled with the regret of never having truly lived. On a whim, she decided to start a small cafe. That cafe eventually became the Maple Tea Cafe, and her calculated risks allowed for financial success at the beginning. She hired Kaz after seeing his reflexes in action, although the two did not get along at all in the beginning. They both had the same cold, closed off, and emotionally scarred demeanors. By fate, luck, or chance, the others she hired had bright, outgoing, and vibrant personalities that managed to break both Karina and Kaz out of their bubbles and help them live as themselves. “Well, show’s over, back to work everyone!” Karina clapped her hands, signaling that they should all go back inside. Kaz went to the kitchen and put on his apron. While Kuroi had managed to run everything in his energy drink induced rush, there was one popular menu item he could not make. Only Kaz could make Maple Tea Cafe’s famous Maple pudding. It wasn’t a secret ingredient that made it so unique to Kaz, but rather a secret technique. Normal pudding was made by beating air into it. Kaz’s supernatural control over the wind allowed him to elegantly swirl air into the pudding mix rather than simply beating it. The result of varying and perfecting the swirl of air with sugar and toppings into the pudding mix made the final result a unique, fluffy, and creamy delicacy. After it was announced to the cafe that Maple puddings were ready to be made for the day, orders came piling in. Kaz prepared all the ingredients and got to work. First, the pudding mix had to be prepared. Kyosuke ran to and from the stockroom, lugging pounds of mix powder and combining it with milk in a large pot before handing it off to Kaz. Next came the technique step. Often, Kyosuke and Cindy would (not-so-sneakily) poke their heads around Kaz’s shoulders as he mixed the pudding ingredients to learn his secret. Kaz had mastered the technique to the point where it looked like he was doing normal motions with his hands, but the air around him would invisibly work the pudding into fluffy delicious perfection. “Urrgghh… I should go and sleep for a day now…” A black male in his early twenties slouched from the front counter into the kitchen. “Welp, looks like Kuroi’s hyper mode ran out! Energy drinks have a cost, y’know!” Kyosuke chuckled. Kuroi slumped into a chair in the backroom and immediately fell asleep, softly snoring. Kuroi was a nickname: his real name had long since been forgotten amongst the team members. While he was a mix of many different races, his origins were primarily African. He lived in Japan after high school, and trained as a sushi chef for a few years before moving back to America and being hired at Maple Tea Cafe. On his first day of work, Kyosuke nicknamed him Kuroi. It was unfortunate that this name would stick. Nonetheless, he went along with it. Despite his easygoingness, Kuroi was the next most serious member after Karina, always assisting in bringing the atmosphere into a more serious nature after Kyosuke’s and Cindy’s shenanigans. His specialty in the cafe was making unique delicacy sushi, with synergistic ingredients from many different cultures. Kaz felt extremely grateful towards the friends he made at work. Thanks to his everyday routine, his workplace felt like home, he learned to express his true personality, and he was finally able to take his mind off of the past. Likewise, Karina went through a similar change. The synergy amongst the team members had helped them grow from each other in various ways. Now, the team works together to run the Maple Tea Cafe. With Karina’s business acumen, the bizarre menu ideas generated by the team members (mainly Kyosuke) were brought to life, causing the cafe to become a smashing hit among young adults. Kaz marveled at how far he had come as a person since those days. “Are you thinking of corny thoughts about life?” Cindy’s voice interrupted Kaz’s train of thought. “Whuh?” He was taken aback. “You had this really stupid dopey look on your face. You’re supposed to be making your famous pudding!” Cindy stuck a spoon into the mix Kaz was working on and tasted it. “How does it still taste so fluffy and creamy when you’re not even paying attention to it? It’s not fairrr how are you doing this?” she whined, “Teach meee!” “Well, all you do is move your fingers around it and zap!” Kaz joked, miming electricity coming out of his fingers. “Speaking of zapping, did you hear about that thunderstorm last night?” Cindy asked. “Well yeah, was kinda hard not to hear it, right?” Kaz replied. “Well get this, apparently a bunch of people reported that during the storm, lightning hit the same place hundreds of times!” Cindy exclaimed, “Hundreds! I thought it wasn’t even supposed to hit twice.” “Heh, well I think it might just have been one of those optical illusions, y’know?” Kaz replied, slowing down in his speech as he came to realize something. And then it hit him. The reason why he couldn’t fall asleep last night. It wasn’t because the thunder was too loud, or that the weather was too uncomfortably hot, but rather because... Next Chapter